Panasonic AG-HMC150

This was to be the new camera that the HDR-FX1000 finally won out in a couple of important areas. Ironically, it was not image quality. The Panny produces a beautiful image at it's highest quality setting. It's also suprisingly good in low light, and probably as good as any HD cam anywhere near this price range in low light situations.

So where did it fall short? It wasn't the lens configuration, which has a real absolute zoom unlike the Sony. In fact, design and operation was pretty darn good overall. It seems almost exactly like an old DVX, so if you're coming from the old Panny workhorse, you'll feel right at home. This of course does make it seem a bit dated, but who cares? I would say a better flip out display would be nice. Menu navigation could be a bit better too. Minor issues really.

Turns out to be two key areas I took issue with. First of all was the AVCHD file format. The compression is efficient, allowing about 90 minutes on a single 16gig SD card. This however seems to also make it rather choppy in the editor as compared to HDV. Sony Vegas does provide native AVCHD support nowadays, but it puts such a load on the system that stepping preview resolution way down is mandatory. Render times can be quite long as well. Mind you, this is a 2.88ghz quad core intel with 4gigs of ram!

I could have probably worked around that. Again, the image quality is simply vibrant with beautifully saturated colors, and very crisp as well. Seems however for some reason Panny has dropped the batteries used with the ol' DVX, and gone with a new system. Not only is the highest capacity battery almost $200, it only runs about 90 to 120 minutes! Huh?? The largest capacity L series Sony batts will run over six hours and cost half of that.

The other issue came from the fact that unless you plan to buy countless numbers of SDHC class 6 cards, you have to dump your video to hard drive before you can shoot again. You'll of course want to back up that hard drive as well. With the old tape system, it's not so urgent. I can turn around an shoot aother six hour event right after the first with no trouble.

I suspect this cam might be better suited for applications other than event video. It would be ideal for the budding filmmaker. Or for doing short shoots where you need to get into post right away.

As for me, I don't see going tapeless for a little while yet.

Sony HDR-FX1000

After much research, I finally decided to pull the trigger on Sony's new camera. This is a much more fitting replacement for the venerable HDR-FX1 than the HDR-FX7 was. On the plus side, the latter can be had at much reduced prices now, and is a good camera for the current price.

Several advances come with this camera, including new glass, and new CMOS sensors. Amazingly, Sony has finally decided to include progressive scan and real 24P! A first for them in this price range. One of the most attractive aspects of this camera is the low light sensitivity. An amazing 1.5 LUX makes it one of the best HD camcorders anywhere near this price. Several other improvements include esentially doubling the number of pixels in the external display. It's amazingly crisp and bright.

I wish they'd included XLR inputs, but you have to look to Sony's higher end models for that. There are some other quibbles too, such as puzzling over why they removed the absolute zoom lever, and went back to the continuously spinning ring. For the money however, I just don't think you can go wrong.